


Taste of Gold

by disparity



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F, Pining, ridiculous conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 11:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10217009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disparity/pseuds/disparity
Summary: Merrill never wondered what gold tasted like before she met Isabela.





	

When Merrill was just a girl, she heard this story about a woman with eyes green as the first shoots of spring and golden hair down to her ankles. Her face was bare, for she belonged to no clan, and the only evidence of her Dalish heritage was the ironbark dagger on her thigh.

She was a traveler, a nomad, sheltered by green canopies and a funny hat with a wide brim. It kept sun and rain out of her eyes, though she was still covered head to toe in freckles from all the times she stripped bare and swam up and down the river. Wherever she went, she left behind legends of a beautiful water nymph with the kindest eyes.

She wasn’t always kind, though. Sometimes the cruelties of the world called for an avenging angel, and she answered the call with just that dagger, nothing more. She had no magic or sword, no armor and no shield. She could kill a hundred ways with that dagger, but she only ever used one: straight between the eyes.

There was no moral to the story, no lesson to be learned. She didn't die on a pyre like that sad lady the humans worshipped, and she didn't ever save a queen or champion. She just traveled on her own, righting wrongs as she came across them, making room for the good in the world by casting out the evil. She was the story you told whenever someone did you wrong.  _ Just wait until the water nymph comes down the river, and you'll get what's yours. _

Sometimes Merrill thinks Isabela is like the woman in that story, taking the water wherever it pleases her. She’s no angel, of course, no green eyes or golden hair or freckles. Her skin’s like warm, wet soil, and her hair’s like the night sky in between the stars. She glitters with jewelry from her ears and neck and that spot beneath her bottom lip. (Merrill never wondered what gold tasted like before she met Isabela.)

But there’s something about that sense of freedom, the way she doesn’t ever say sorry for existing. Merrill piles apologies on apologies for the way she talks, the things she misses. It’s only polite, she thinks, until Isabela says, “Apologies don’t make friends, kitten,” and Merrill wonders about that for  _ days _ before she asks Isabela what on earth it’s supposed to mean.

“Well,” says Isabela, draping her arm over the chair next to her. Her boots are up on the table, heels resting in something sticky, and she doesn’t seem to mind. “I’m no preacher, darling, so feel free to suggest I stuff a boot in my mouth; but being sorry all the time is no way to live. Courtesy’s nice and all, and none of us  _ wants _ to be the villain--unless it pays well--but you don’t get anywhere by second-guessing yourself all the time, now do you?”

Merrill thinks she might be drunk, but it’s ever so hard to tell. Isabela can sweep anyone away with her words, even when they don’t make sense.

“You... don’t want me to be polite?” Merrill asks, because she still  _ wants _ to understand, even though she’s half-certain it’s impossible.

“Oh, kitten,” she sighs, and Merrill just loves the way it sounds on her lips, “don’t you see? It doesn’t matter what I want you to be.” She waves her hand around the tavern, gesturing to its patrons. “It doesn’t matter what any of these louts want you to be. If you disappoint people, that’s  _ their _ bloody problem, not yours.”

Merrill ducks her head, feeling small. “But I care what you think of me,” she says to her hands. “If I disappointed you… oh, that’d be just  _ awful _ .”

Isabela mutters under her breath and says, hardly louder, “You’re too good.” She places her hand atop Merrill’s--startled, Merrill meets her eyes across the table. They’re brown and soft, but a little sad. “You’re too good for this shithole of a city, and you’re too good for someone like me.”

“But I want you anyway.”

Merrill flushes red all over, and she can’t blame it all on the wine or the heat. She’s said the wrong thing again, and Isabela’s going to run away. She starts to pull her hand back, and Merrill grabs it tight.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, then frowns and says, “No! I’m not. I’m not sorry for wanting you, Isabela. I want you more than  _ anything _ , only I can’t use blood magic to make you want me back--or perhaps I could, but to me that sounds like a  _ bad _ idea.”

“Kitten-”

“I’m not done!” Merrill shrieks. She knows it’s a bit mad, or more than a bit, but she thinks if she can just keep Isabela here forever, she won’t ever have to say goodbye. “I just… I-I think you’re amazing, you’re the loveliest girl I’ve ever seen, and you’re so clever--and when you talk, I want to memorize every single thing you say, although my memory’s terrible.”

Isabela smiles sadly. “That’s sweet of you.”

Merrill realizes she’s still holding Isabela’s hand, and she lets it go. She can’t keep Isabela here--no one could ever make Isabela do something she didn’t want to do. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I really am, this time. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She knows she’s gone and ruined it now because, of course, that’s what she does. She ruins, she spoils, she shatters. Merrill’s never created anything good in her entire life. The Eluvian is still just as broken as it ever was, and- oh  _ Creators _ , Merrill just wants to fix  _ something _ . All around her are these beautiful, broken things, and she doesn’t know what to do with them.

Isabela leaves. She wouldn’t be Isabela if she didn’t sweep through like the wind--sometimes with an ungovernable destructive force, other times a cold whisper that raises gooseflesh. Merrill dreams of the golden divot beneath Isabela’s sad smile and wonders whether Isabela ever thinks about the things she leaves behind. If she ever wants to come back, even if she only wants it for the tiniest moment.

***

When Kirkwall burns, Merrill is left standing in a bed of coals. She sees hope amidst pillars of black smoke, and she wonders if that makes her naive. She doesn’t feel innocent of anything, anymore. Merrill’s always tried to leave things better than she found them, but she’s helped and hurt so many people now that she’s lost track of it all. She doesn’t know if she’s done more good than bad in the world; she half-hates not knowing, but the other half thinks sometimes it’s better not to.

It’s easy to lose track of the days, the months, even the years. Merrill feels so old and tired, and still people look at her in the streets with her ball of yarn and wonder where her mother’s gone. It would be nice, she thinks, to have had a mother at all. She doesn’t have Marethari now either; she doesn’t have her clan, or Hawke. She’s got a broken mirror and a broken heart, and it’s the worst love story anyone’s ever heard.

Of all the sad stories Merrill knows, the ones of wasted love are the saddest. Hers wastes away like so many other things until the day comes when she can’t really say she loves Isabela, anymore. She cherishes the thought of her, of the days that weren’t  _ good _ but  _ alright _ because at least there was an insanely beautiful, clever woman amidst the terrors and tragedies. At least then she could picture Isabela’s face, and somehow it made the worst things bearable. But now she’s forgotten all the details--the exact color of Isabela’s eyes, that scent she knows is intoxicating but can no longer describe.

She still thinks of Isabela when she’s in the mood to wonder what might’ve been. But protecting the alienage and rebuilding Kirkwall into something that just might deserve to call itself a city again doesn’t leave a lot of room for daydreaming. Mostly Merrill works, still trying to fix things, even after all this time. She doesn’t know how to stop trying. She’s not sure who she’d be if she stopped.

By the time Isabela comes back, Merrill’s dismissed the idea that her love is worth anything because it doesn’t ever seem to make a difference. She used to see sunlight in the clouds, but now she just looks up and waits for the rain.

And it’s raining the day Isabela comes and kneels under the vhenadal, reaching forward to feel the rough tree bark against her callused hand. Merrill doesn’t even recognize her. She’s only coming to see what the trouble is--because despite everything that’s happened, humans in the alienage still mean trouble--and sort it out, one way or another. The human’s got a pair of wicked daggers that could do a lot of damage, if Merrill wasn’t here to stop it.

But she is. “Erm, hello there. I don’t mean to interrupt you-”

The woman laughs, and Merrill sits there with a mouth stuck open for a moment. It’s long enough for a quiet, “Still apologizing?”

Merrill frowns. “Well, perhaps you should be the one apologizing,” she says smartly. “But I’ll excuse your poor manners if you’ll only tell me what business brings you to the alienage.”

She’s unprepared to see Isabela’s face again, after all this time, but she sees it anyway. She looks at everything that’s different, and all the things that are the same. Isabela says, “I’ve been wondering that myself.” She stands, her mouth twisting sadly. “All these years, and here I am strutting in as if I can just disappear for a decade and expect everything to be right where I left it.” She gestures to the vhenadahl. “But this is still here. You’re still here.”

“Varric’s here, too,” says Merrill in a voice like a mouse, and oh, she really thought she’d gotten over that. She clears her throat. “He’s viscount of Kirkwall now, though I don’t think he likes it very much.”

Isabela laughs. It’s not the loud sort when she’s drunk at the tavern, or that little giggle when she’s being clever. It’s more of a hum, really--as if she wants to laugh but can’t quite remember how.

“You’re probably right.” Isabela does something strange, then. She looks down and rubs the back of her neck, and if Merrill didn’t know better, she’d say Isabela was nervous. “You were right about a lot of things, turns out. Things you’ve no right being right about.”

“Oh.” Merrill blinks. “What?”

She sighs. “Oh, bollocks. There’s a reason I don’t do this. Several, in fact. There are too many ways it goes wrong, and it’s not worth it.” She shakes her head--then stops, purses her lips, and says, “Of course, then, sometimes it is.”

Merrill cocks her head, thinks it over, and says, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about. At least, I don’t think I do.”

Isabela takes a step forward, and Merrill’s hand twitches. She’s still so terrible at reading people, at figuring out what they want when they won’t just  _ say it, _ but she’s quicker to reach for an entropy spell these days. She’s had her good faith thrown back too many times to keep offering it blindly. Still, she offers, and steels herself for the rejection.

“I think you do,” says Isabela. Her mouth quirks in something like a smile. “I think you know a lot more than you let on.”

This is what Merrill knows: Years ago,  _ ages, _ she fell in love with a pirate girl called Isabela. She’d have done anything for a smile, anything to hear  _ kitten _ from those parted lips, but she never deserved it. And Isabela doesn’t deserve her either.

Is that the secret, the lesson, the truth hidden beneath it all? They don’t deserve love; perhaps nobody does, really. But that didn’t stop Merrill from loving Isabela all those years ago, and maybe- maybe it didn’t stop Isabela either.

“I might,” says Merrill. She reaches forward uncertainly. Isabela catches her hand and threads their fingers together with such ease--as if they always belonged there, and have only just figured it out. “You could say it, you know,” she whispers. “That  _ is  _ what most people do.”

Isabela smiles, and in the pouring rain, she’s the sun. “Are we the odd ones out again?” she asks, placing a hand to her heart. “Damn. Well, it’s a good job we’re used to it.”

Merrill leans in and gently presses her lips to Isabela’s. She half-expects Isabela to pull her in and kiss her senseless or make some naughty joke--but she doesn’t. They kiss softly, unhurried. The rain picks up and soaks them through as they stand there under the vhenadal, and Merrill doesn’t mind at all. She imagines they’re at sea, traveling wherever the wind takes them, breathless and free. She can picture it so clearly.

But this isn’t a dream, and she can’t stand here kissing Isabela in the rain forever. There are still so many things to do-

“Ssh, kitten,” whispers Isabela. “I can feel you shaking. Let’s get you out of the rain.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Merrill shakes her off, resists the gentle pull toward home. “None of it  _ matters, _ Isabela. You can’t stay, and I can’t go.”

“Can’t you?”

It occurs to Merrill that maybe it’s a bit silly how she’s never thought of leaving. But she’s never had anywhere to go before. She goes where she’s taken and stays where she’s left--and  _ oh,  _ that sounds quite sad, doesn’t it?

“Come with me.” Isabela pulls her close and says, “Come away with me.”

“But- But there’s so much to do-”

Isabela smiles sadly. “Some things you can’t fix. No matter how much you do for Kirkwall, it'll never thank you.” She places her hands on Merrill’s waist, cheek resting against her hair. The words brush against her ear, “There’s a whole world out there, kitten; it’s not all harsh and sad like this. There are beautiful things, too, if you know how to look.”

Merrill doesn’t know who she’d be if she just ran away and left the broken things behind. But maybe--just maybe--it’d be someone who loves and is loved, who looks for beauty and finds it every day in Isabela’s smile, the curve of her waist, and lips that taste like gold.


End file.
